transformer

[ trans-fawr-mer ]

noun

1. a person or thing that causes or undergoes a change in appearance, structure, character, etc.
2. Electricity. an electric device consisting essentially of two or more windings wound on the same core, which by electromagnetic induction transforms electric energy from one set of one or more circuits to another set of one or more circuits such that the frequency of the energy remains unchanged while the voltage and current usually change.
3. Also transformer model. Computers. a type of neural network that uses statistical relationships between sequential data, such as words and sentences, to learn context and produce output.

transformer

/ trænsˈfɔːmə /

noun

1. a device that transfers an alternating current from one circuit to one or more other circuits, usually with an increase ( step-up transformer ) or decrease ( step-down transformer ) of voltage. The input current is fed to a primary winding, the output being taken from a secondary winding or windings inductively linked to the primary
2. a person or thing that transforms

transformer

/ trăns-fôr′mər /

1. A device used to change the voltage of an alternating current in one circuit to a different voltage in a second circuit, or to partially isolate two circuits from each other. Transformers consist of two or more coils of conducting material, such as wire, wrapped around a core (often made of iron). The magnetic field produced by an alternating current in one coil induces a similar current in the other coils.
2. ◆ If there are fewer turns on the coil that carries the source of the power than there are on a second coil, the second coil will provide the same power but at a higher voltage. This is called a step-up transformer.
3. ◆ If there are fewer turns on the second coil than on the source coil, the outgoing power will have a lower voltage. This is called a step-down transformer.
4. Compare converter

transformer

1. A device used to transfer electrical energy from one circuit to another. With an alternating current , a transformer will either raise or lower the voltage as it makes the transfer.

Word History and Origins

Origin of transformer¹

First recorded in 1595–1605; transform + -er ¹

Example Sentences

These older networks can be trained on far less data than transformers and still perform well for many applications.

From MIT Technology Review

This process is known as “pre-training” and is part of what makes transformers so powerful.

From MIT Technology Review

What I think GPT-3 has done differently is the fact that there’s just orders of magnitude more data that is now being used to train this transformer technique.

From MIT Technology Review

GPT-3 is part of a family of language models known as transformers, which represented a major breakthrough in applying unsupervised learning to natural-language processing when the first one was introduced in 2017.

From MIT Technology Review

Much of this is tied to how large the context window is in the transformer architecture.

From Search Engine Land

At this point, we also get to see Grande shoot a big transformer-type fellow with rockets that blast out of her breasts.

From The Daily Beast

Big scary Transformer-like robots with heads ablaze that frighten the kids back across the treacherous desert?

From The Daily Beast

We know that a transformer fire often leads to a power outage.

From The Daily Beast

So Guillermo Del Toro crafts CGI Transformer-like robots to save them.

From The Daily Beast

They showed him a one-foot-high robot that looked like a transformer.

From The Daily Beast

He had a private wire to his desk, and a transformer that turned the current from the box back into thoughts.

From Project Gutenberg

The dimensions of the complete magnetic circuit, of the transformer you are going to construct, are given in Fig. 11.

From Project Gutenberg

If the magnetic circuit surrounds the windings, as indicated in Fig. 10, the transformer is said to be of the shell type.

From Project Gutenberg

These pieces can now be clamped across the ends of the transformer with small bolts, as shown in Fig. 19.

From Project Gutenberg

This still left them twenty light-years from Thetis, with a cupful of transformer fuel in the emergency tank.

From Project Gutenberg

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